


Home

by starforged



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - Fandom, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gen, Spoilers, The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 05:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13024344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/pseuds/starforged
Summary: Rey wonders what home really is.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> There are spoilers. Takes place post-TLJ.

Home.

Rey had never had one, not in a true sense of the word. She wasn't really sure what the true sense of it would be, so that didn't help. Jakku was a place of heat and sand and husks. It wasn't home, it could never be that.

Even when she was living there.

What did it mean to her now? Where would she find it? It seemed like a million years ago now that she _begged_ Luke to help her find her place, and yet, did that include this ideal of home?

Rey stared out into the quiet darkness of space from the cockpit of the _Falcon_. Inside the ship, there was - a lot. She was still learning to filter in what the Force brought to her. Connections, sounds, life. Some were quiet and dull, but some made it seem like she was staring at suns.

And if she was being quite honest, it was utterly exhausting. The Force, her, them. This ship that was a… home. Maybe.

“I dreaded seeing this ship.”

He always picked inopportune times, and she was beginning to suspect that it was on purpose. 

At first, it was a persistence that was built on something desperate and unhinged. Rey still tasted that in the back of their connection, something sour in her throat that she couldn't rid herself of. But that wasn't the way to get to her, and he knew it.

So this was how Kylo Ren seeped between the cracks in her walls.

She pointedly ignored him, keeping her gaze on the stars and hoping she looked pensive, insightful.

He sighed. “My mother rarely visited me. She was important, trusted. I just think it was a decent excuse to get away from me.”

She didn't care.

She did care, but she didn't want to care.

“And when she did come, it was on this ship. With my father.”

Maybe he could read her thoughts. Maybe he knew how dangerously close she was coming to calling it _home_ , and he wanted to destroy that for her. 

“Nothing you can say to me,” Rey said, a hint of bitterness lacing her words, “will turn me back.”

She finally turned, looking at him through their connection. The Force bended time and space, as if putting them in the same fold. Where once she saw sorrow and confliction, she saw more. It wasn’t a peace. She didn’t think there could be peace in such a declaration, regardless of how he clung to it, let it drape over him like a second skin. It was a steady barrage of storm. She met it without hesitation.

“You told _me_ to kill the past, but you still let it persuade your actions.”

“Are you calling me a hypocrite?” There was a ghost of a smile on his pale face. It didn’t reach his eyes, as if the light had been fully rejected in any form.

“Yes.” She didn’t smile. 

“I dreaded this ship because I was never going to go home on it. I think I knew that even then,” Kylo Ren finally said. There was a firm set to his mouth now, the ghost having lifted. His brow was drawn, his gaze steady on her. 

He had a home, she wanted to say but didn’t. It was too much for her, for someone who had nothing but sand and old dreams that he helped her to shred into a million pieces. 

But that was okay, she realized. Because she was doing what he had suggested, and maybe that was the difference between them now. She could let go, and he could not. Whatever Han and Leia and Luke had been for him, been to him, there had been love. It might have made mistakes, it might has been misguided. But it was love. It was home. 

For a moment, Rey glanced to his hand. The offer that lived inside of it wasn’t dead. She could feel that seeping through their bond, through this strange connection that she wished she could rid herself of. Would she go through her whole life tied to her opposite? In that offer rested a home that he was desperate to offer her and that she was desperate to reject.

His fingers twitched and curled.

Her head tilted when she looked back up at him, and this time, she did smile. “Let go,” she told him.


End file.
